PowerPivot

"I drew chalk outlines like some kind of strange murder scene. But nothing was being killed except my idea of myself as needing to be perfect." On making one's own trousers, and on showing our true(er?) selves to the world. Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitute.com/captivate-podcast/the-candy-striped-trousers Recorded 12 June 2023.

"Let's talk about what happens when we all make art. And I don't mean everybody has to be trained. I don't mean everybody has to be making beautiful art. I do mean to interrogate what we mean by art, specifically." Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitute.com/captivate-podcast/all-art Recorded 6 June 2023.

"There's so much richness and cross pollination that happens when we go into those rabbit holes. When we allow ourselves the luxury of just opening the door and tumbling down. As intensives we are specialists in rabbit holes. These are some of our native territory. This is the place where we are from." Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitute.com/captivate-podcast/the-lushness-of-rabb...

"When I get stuck, I forget why I do any of the things that I do. I forget the sparkle in someone's eye when they find out for the first time that they're an intensive, or that food grows on trees. Or the softness of grass underfoot. Or the miracle of a waterfall. I forget what I know. I forget what I have to teach. I forget what I have to learn. I forget. What I'm thinking about today is lush abu...

"Maybe I will eat a single, ripe, peach. Anything. Anything to completion.... We forget that the restoration is possible. And then something happens and we remember. But we don't have to wait for it to happen by accident." The joy and release of completing... anything. Especially when you are an intensive. Especially when every started-but-not-finished thing haunts you, shames you, makes you lose...

"What I discovered, over several false hires, is that the skills are just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, skills can be trained, sometimes skills are the least important part of the iceberg." Using the framework of intensiveness and expansiveness to match jobs to people and people to jobs. And avoiding the trap of hiring an intensive for an expansive job just because you meet another intensive in...

"Today, what does your body say? What do you need to say no to? What is your body saying no to?" Listening to our bodies. Listening to our guts. Sometimes we have a bad feeling about a person or a place or a food or anything. And sometimes we push those feelings aside to our detriment. How do we respect our bodies when they are telling us "no?" Transcripts and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitut...

"pleasure doesn't start with orgasm-level excitement. Pleasure starts with the seeds of safety." On the impact of stress and need on our abilities as (especially intensive) leaders; on how feeling safe makes us more human and better leaders; on the importance of knowing when to slow down to avoid making a crisis into an everlasting mess. Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitute.com/ca...

"It's May. It's Pleasure Month, here at the Intensives Institute. And we're thinking about ways to allow our sense of pleasure to be part of our guidance system, to be part of our awareness system. And to recognize that everybody is better off when their pleasure centers fire." Here is a link to the old Thirty Day Pleasure Project. Note that this site is no longer maintained and any links within i...

"Sometimes I'm right, and it doesn't matter. What matters is that they're having their life and they're experiencing their thing. And when you bring that to leadership, it completely changes how you function... Above all, I wish to put down disdain, because it carries with it disrespect." Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitute.com/captivate-podcast/judgment-and-grace Recorded 3 May...

"...what SIEF does, that the other ones don't do, is lifts out this one set of behaviors and characteristics, just one- it's one axis.... This isn't meant to say that we're one dimensional; this is meant to describe one dimension of our deeply multi-dimensional selves." The difference, and advantage of, the SIEF's single-axis framework in contrast to comprehensive personality profiles such as Meye...

"We just had a full moon, which is traditionally the letting-go-of-things moon. That always surprises me, because fullness makes me think of taking things on. But no, when your arms are full, you have to pass things by, you have to put things down." Spring, abundance, fullness, focus- and changing the world, of course. The New Fashioned Company: https://thenewfashioned.co/ Notes and Transcript: ht...

Kimra Luna: " ...when you're with those like-minded people, and you know that you're doing something to make the world better... you get hope automatically. It starts filling you up." Leela Sinha in compelling conversation with Kimra Luna: abortion doula, professional ranter, and founder of Idaho Abortion Rights mutual aid. They talk about finding hope in community, taking individual action, strat...

"this is not Pollyanna, like, oh, there's something beautiful in everything. No, no, some things are just terrible. I'm not gonna lie to you about that.... and, I refuse to shape my identity around oppression. I won't do it." Forming our worlds around meeting our collective and individual needs; so that we can defeat oppression without forming ourselves around the oppression itself. If we form our...

"the lemon balm, the peppermint and the comfrey all have a reputation. They have reputations for being bullies, they have a reputation for being too loud, too big, too much. Oh... maybe that's why I like them. They are a lot. And that power is very, very appealing." On creating containers that allow us and our ideas to flourish while limiting the harm that we and our ideas might do. Transcript and...

"What did I do today, to make today a place that I could live in? Tiny hopes. Tiny, absolutely persistent hopes." We seldom talk about depression while it is happening, about the strategies for getting through the hard days. Some days are strung together from a million tiny little hopes. Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitute.com/captivate-podcast/a-million-tiny-little-hopes/ Record...

"...and so I have come to the point in my life, where I am pacing around my office saying I need thank you notes ." On the challenges of writing thank you notes; and the absolute joy of writing them when you really do have something to be grateful for. Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitute.com/captivate-podcast/thank-you-notes Recorded 6 April 2023.

"the bottom line is I want to give you everything all at once. All at once, all at once, all at once. Which is such an intensive thing to do, right? Like I'm so into all these different things that I'm learning and exploring and getting deeper in. And I want to share them with everybody. The impulse to everything all at once has a reason. And it needs to be celebrated." Celebrating intensiveness,...

"As an intensive, you know, if it's not quite right, it's not right. And if it's not right, it's not been done. And if it hasn't been done, well, then we're gonna have to do it, aren't we?" A look into the thought process behind the construction of the Sinha Intensive-Expansive Framework, and how it can be a tool that helps us meet everyone's needs, all the time. Transcript and notes: https://dev....

"I want to say something about the shooting. But I'm out of words. I found just enough, scraped out of the corners with a corner of a spoon, to say: I'm so sorry. We are together. Here are a few threads of hope . But that's all I've got. That's all I've got...." This episode refers to the school shooting in Nashville on March 27, 2023. Editor's note: While Leela says that to zir memory only one st...

We have many interests. We work with different types of clients and different organizations. How do we- especially intensives- create the conditions that allow us to get into the right flow, where we can do our best work, smoothly and at the times when it is required? Sometimes a little nudge, and a little context- and perhaps the right feather boa- is all we need. Transcript and notes: https://de...

"If you have a community, or a company, or a team, probably you have mostly people who believe in airing it all,o r they believe in not talking about it. I'm here to advocate for a blend, a mix of the two. I'm here to advocate for the judicious use of gentle silence." Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitute.com/captivate-podcast/the-judicious-use-of-gentle-silence Recorded 20 March 2...

"this culture, the one that holds the power around us is a culture that asks us to suffer. It invites, it expects, it valorizes suffering. It wants us- It tells us that if we aren't hurting, it doesn't count... But let's bring it back to pleasure. What is the tiny thing that still feels good? " Is it the gift of giving, and the gift of receiving? Here is a link to Leela's recent guest sermon at No...

"I can't say as I'd know how to tell what it was like to take the road more traveled, because I'm not sure I've ever done that." Join Leela on a walk to sit near a pond and get close to the pond's inhabitants. And do some deep thinking in the quiet, of course. Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitute.com/captivate-podcast/the-pond-and-the-gate Recorded 16 March, 2023.

How often do we stray from ourselves in pursuit of survival for ourselves? How often do we do things that put bread on our tables, but don't truly feed us? Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitute.com/captivate-podcast/straying-from-my-roots Recorded 1 March 2023.